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Here was the thing.
They were dating. Lance had asked him out in the locker room after PE, so they’d be alone and very sweaty, which was rather eh, but Keith couldn’t bring himself to care. He was too distracted by Lance’s nervous appearance, but he recovered by clearing his throat and pushing his shoulders back.
“You wanna go out sometime?”
Keith, having been crushing on Lance since their first year, blinked, and mumbled a quiet, “Uh, sure.”
“Great,” Lance grinned albeit a little warily, and Keith resisted the urge to squish the life out of him. “Also, before I forget, you left your chemistry book at my place.”
Ah, right. Best friend things. Constantly hanging out at each other’s place, staying the night, gaming together, helping each other out with homework and falling for each other, like best friends do. Amazing. Fantastic. Keith loved friendship.
In all seriousness, Lance was one of the greatest friends he’d ever had and he loved spending time with him, platonically, but after a few months of spending platonic time together, Keith’s gay side had been activated. It’d been on the move from the very start, appreciating Lance’s appearance, enjoying the view every time Lance would smile at him, having an existential crisis whenever that smile turned into a laugh and basically everything else Lance did.
Of course Keith was Keith and bottled everything up. He also didn’t wanna mess up their friendship – like nine out of ten people – and decided that being friends with him was good enough. It wasn’t like he’d completely lost hope because Lance did come out to him after a year and, hm, Keith had thrown a party in his own head afterwards, which he thought was kinda sad, but he couldn’t help it.
Anyway, drifting off.
“… I’ll come pick it up after school?”
“Great!” Lance chirped and oh, decided that now was a good time to change. Keith was not having it. “Man, you’ve no idea how nervous I was to ask you out. I mean, I was about 86% sure you liked me back because of that one time your nose turned all red when I touched your knee. And also ‘cause I caught you staring a couple of times, but you can never know for sure, right?”
What. Shit. Keith didn’t hesitate to open his locker and casually hide his face from view. And started pulling his shirt off to further strengthen his lame attempt at acting cool.
“Yeah, I kinda like you,” he managed to say in a calm voice. Go him.
“Aww, can’t believe I have that effect on you,” Lance chuckled, but Keith knew him and easily detected the hint of shyness in his voice. There was some shuffling, a pop from Lance’s deodorant and Keith braced himself. “’s actually a big compliment.”
Wait, what.
Keith slowly leaned away from his locker to bring back their eye-contact and just happened to catch Lance in the middle of spraying his underarms. “Huh?”
Boing. Lance’s cheeks turned darker. Yes, finally, Keith wasn’t the only one completely losing it here. “Dude, look at you.”
Instead of responding like a normal person, Keith raised an eyebrow. And blinked. “You’re being weird.”
“’m not. Here.” Lance threw the bottle at him and Keith easily caught it with one hand. “You stayin’ for dinner?”
A change of subject, but Keith didn’t mind and nodded. “Sure.”
So, yeah they were dating now. Not a lot changed, though, because they were still best friends and acted like they usually would.
Except um, holding hands was a thing and Lance liked said thing, like, a lot. He wanted to hold hands when they were walking to school in the morning, in class, in between classes, during lunch, after school— basically 24/7. It wasn’t like Keith minded holding hands, but now that they were a thing it was becoming harder and harder to keep his composure.
At first it was fine. Didn’t mean that much to him, but after the first few days, it was starting to feel a lot more intimate than he’d anticipated.
Lance’s hands were always warm, always soft, snug. It was grounding, nice and above all, theirs. They held hands because they were dating and that was why Keith’s heart would flutter every time Lance held out his hand for him or grasped his wrist, wiggly fingers playfully spidering down until their palms were aligned.
So far so good. Hand holding was pretty innocent, right?
Right. Keith could handle that. He could also handle the hugs because, well, Lance gave nice hugs. Unlike most people, Lance gave it his all and went big. Throwing his arms around Keith’s shoulders, nosing his neck, squeezing so hard that he sometimes forced a wheeze out of him, but that was okay. Keith liked it. It gave him an excuse to hold Lance close and smell his sweet conditioner.
After hugs came the— cuddling. Lance wanted to snuggle and cuddle almost every day and Keith was sure he was going to die of affection overload. Seriously, Lance was not afraid to throw a leg over his hips and try to melt into him, or something. It wasn’t that different from hugging, so again, Keith could handle it just fine.
What he couldn’t handle was Lance carefully inching closer and closer until they were only a few inches apart. “Hey, Keith?”
Keith panicked and laid a hand on Lance’s chest to keep that distance because holy shit. “What?”
“Um,” Lance uttered lamely, cheeks somewhat red, which was only a tiny bit adorable. “I was gonna ask if I could kiss you?”
Kissing. Right. That was a thing. Couples kissed. Did the kissing thing. One teeny tiny problem, though.
“I’ve never kissed anyone before.”
“Oh.”
Yeah. Oh.
Keith didn’t know what to do and kinda just sat there, staring at Lance, feeling beyond awkward. It wasn’t like he was scared of screwing up because Lance had made it very, very clear that he liked Keith a lot and he wasn’t an asshole who’d ridicule him for this type of thing, but Keith didn’t like not being in control.
Kissing couldn’t be that hard. Sure, sometimes it looked like people were trying to eat each other’s faces and Keith wasn’t exactly into that, but more often than not, it looked pretty doable.
Lance’s nose twitched, like he was fucking puppy. Then, oh no, he smirked. Bye puppy, hello asshole. “Want me to teach you?”
This guy. Keith’s hand was still on his chest and he took advantage of it by shoving Lance back onto the couch and went to lay down with a huff to create some more distance. “I really hate you sometimes.”
“Aww, no, you liiiike me,” Lance continued to gloat and pushed himself up, trying to look all sexy by crawling towards Keith until he was sitting in between his legs. Keith hated to admit that it was working. “C’mere, so I can kiss you, pretty boy.”
A playful tug on his shirt. Keith groaned and threw his head back, too into him to function. “Lance, I’m this close to kneeing you in the balls.”
“Babe—”
“No.”
“Mi vida.”
Weak. Keith was weak.
And it only got worse when Lance laughed softly. “Got’cha.”
Keith rolled his eyes and hooked his ankle around Lance’s thigh, gently bringing him closer. “Okay, fine. Teach me.”
Well, he asked for it. Lance came closer and closer until he could cage Keith’s face between his long arms. Keith worried his lower lip, nervous yet excited, and blinked a couple of times when Lance neither moved nor spoke. They were just— looking at each other. A couple of centimeters still separated them, allowing Keith to study the blue in Lance’s eyes.
“We can start with a small one.” His voice was quiet and Keith could feel the words against his skin. They smelled like the sugar-coated cookies they had earlier. Almost sickeningly sweet. “It’ll only last a couple of seconds.”
That sounded oddly disappointing and Lance didn’t hide his amusement when Keith frowned. “Huh?”
“There’s different types of kisses,” Lance explained, unable to hide his giddiness, and gently lowered himself until their chests were touching. He folded his hands over Keith’s collarbones and laid his chin on top of them. It felt warm. “The small ones barely last a second because they’re like,” he stopped and— blew him a kiss. Which was… something. “that. They’re for greetings, saying goodbye, a quick show of affection, stuff like that. I think we should start with that one. The only thing you have to do is pucker your lips a little, but not too much. And tilt your head to the right to avoid any nose bumps. And close your eyes, of course.”
Interesting. Keith could do that. He nodded, a silent encouragement, and Lance smiled, eager, pushing himself up and—
Carefully brought their lips together.
Smooch.
Like Lance said, it’d only lasted a second. Not even. He’d felt Lance’s lips touching his own for the briefest moment, putting slight pressure on them and moving back. That was it.
Lance laid his head back down on Keith’s chest with a proud grin. “There you go. How was that?”
“Uh,” Keith brought out and focused on a random spot behind Lance’s head because he couldn’t look him in the eye like a normal person. “good?”
“Yeah?” That grin was rather unsettling because Keith knew that grin. Lance was enjoying himself immensely and Keith didn’t hesitate to flick his ear, which earned him an offended screech. “Hey! No messin’ with the teacher!”
Hm. Keith brought that same hand up to Lance’s hair and played with it and ha, Lance instantly relaxed under his touch. Sometimes Lance was way too easy and Keith loved that about him hmmm— back to business.
“Okay, so what’s the next step?”
Not good.
Now Lance was even more eager. His grin was so wide that Keith could almost see his wisdom teeth. “Open mouth kissing. It’s all about responding to the other person and going with the flow. It’s basically repeating the first step over and over again and finding a rhythm— don’t look at me like that, you’ll see what I mean in a second. Can you um—” Lance sat back on his knees and tapped his stomach. “sit up? It’s easier that way. I mean, we can lay down and kiss, but we’ll save that for later.”
Sure. Keith didn’t know what to expect and hesitantly pushed himself up with his elbows until Lance was practically sitting in his lap. That was definitely a first and something he could get used to.
Lance laid his hands on Keith’s shoulders and shimmied forward like the true loser that he was and chuckled against his lips. For some reason, Keith’s hands automatically found his waist, thumbs sneaking under his shirt a little. “Okay, ready?”
“Mm.”
Closing his eyes, Keith tilted his head to the right like Lance had told him to and waited for the feeling of Lance’s lips on his own again. His heart hammered against his chest as he waited and waited, until the gap between them closed.
Smooch. Lance’s lips touched his own and kissed so very gently that it made Keith sigh happily. That felt nice. Much nicer than the first one, actually. Keith tentatively tried to repeat Lance’s motion, not sure if he was doing it right, and felt Lance pressing himself closer to him, hands sliding up to his neck.
This was happening. Oh, it was happening. Apparently he’d caused some sort of snowball effect because Lance started moving his lips in earnest and Keith…
Froze.
It felt weird and off and-and-and people actually liked doing this?
The tips of their noses touched as Lance pulled back (Keith ignored that stupid wet noise), confused and worried. “You okay?”
“Yeah, ‘m fine, it’s just—” Keith’s hold on Lance’s waist tightened for a second because that was only leverage he had and Lance’s thumbs stroked his jaw in response. “that was weird.”
Luckily that prompted more laughter and Lance laid their foreheads together. “Kissing is weird, but so much fun once you get the hang of it.” Then, ugh, Lance kissed his nose. “I think we should call it a day. You were great, awesome, and cute.” Ugh. “Want my business card?”
Keith didn’t hesitate to push him off the couch.
Lance 💙: baaaabe
Me: what
Lance 💙: come over for netflix and chill?
Netflix and chill.
Me: are you serious rn
Lance 💙: yea
Lance 💙: just bros bein bros. nothing gay about it
Me: lance
Lance 💙: don’t you want any more
Lance 💙: kissing lessons? 😘
Busted. Keith glared at his phone as if it’d slapped him in the face. He hated this. He hated everything because Lance was right.
Lance 💙: I’ll take your silence as a yes
Lance 💙: u know where the spare key is
Lance 💙: <3
Damn it.
Me: ❤️ ️
“You should take the initiative sometimes. Y’know, become the kisser, not the kissee.”
“Kissee isn’t even a word.”
“It totally is.”
Keith groaned loudly and turned back to the TV screen. To be honest, he hadn’t even been paying attention to the characters or the plot, so when someone got shot and another woman started bawling her eyes out over said shot person, he had no idea how to react. Then again, since this was the very definition of ‘Netflix and Chill’, he didn’t feel particularly obligated to know what was going on. Lance’d probably picked a bad show, anyway, since he had very bad taste to begin with.
Next to him, like, right next to him, was Lance playing with the strings of his hoodie, slumped against the wall, hazy eyes fixed on the TV screen, waiting for Keith to make a move, no doubt.
He wanted to, but how.
Was he supposed to lean closer and just go for it? Pull Lance towards him? Cup his face? Push him down on the bed?
What.
Okay, that last one made his face explode. Literally. Keith shrugged off his jacket because he was feeling that hot and Lance glanced over at him, raising an eyebrow.
“What’re you doing?”
“’m taking off my jacket, what does it look like I’m doing?”
“Nothing,” Lance drawled out and tugged on one of the strings before wrapping it around his finger. “you feelin’ hot?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
Lance smirked at him and oh god, Keith wanted to smack him in the face.
So he did.
He grabbed the nearest object, which was a pillow, and shoved it in Lance’s face. Lance screeched in surprise, caught off guard, but recovered quickly and grabbed the pillow to hit Keith with it. Or at least, tried to, because Keith saw this as an opportunity to lean forward and give him a quick peck.
Fuck, his face was red again. Keith cleared his throat awkwardly and shuffled backwards, leaning against the wall in a lame attempt to cover up the redness.
“Good one,” Lance chuckled and put the pillow in his lap, never taking his eyes off Keith. “Was that so hard?”
“Lance.”
It’d barely been a kiss. Hell, he couldn’t even call it a kiss because what the hell was that. Their lips had touched for only a millisecond, so Keith hadn’t really felt anything except for the tiniest hint of Lance’s soft, thin lips.
Muh. He wanted more.
Fine.
Time for his second attempt. Keith slowly raised his head, narrowed his eyes when he saw that Lance was forever watching him with that annoying grin, and reached for his wrist. Without even waiting for Lance to move, he gave a sharp tug and was very pleased when Lance literally fell into his chest.
“Ow! Dude, careful!”
“You’re fine,” Keith brushed him off, held Lance’s cheek and— went for it.
Now he could feel how soft Lance’s lips were. Scrubbed and moisturized. That dork had probably spent a good minute taking care of his lips after he sent that text. Didn’t mean that Keith didn’t appreciate it, though.
It started out like their second kiss. Lance’s lips gently pushing against his and Keith sort of getting used to it and trying to return the kisses, feeling proud of himself, until.
“Open your mouth,” Lance whispered helpfully and looped an arm around Keith’s neck. It was so weird to feel Lance talking into his mouth, fuck. “and follow me.”
He tried, he really did. Let his lips part, waited for Lance to do the same and went with it.
Never mind, it didn’t work.
And Lance ended up laughing. Into his mouth, ah.
“Oh, my god,” Lance snickered and Keith was definitely not appreciating this. His ass of a boyfriend leaned back, ocean eyes twinkling with mirth. “I really like you.”
Oh. Good.
“… I really like you, too.”
At least there was that. Keith regained some of the pride he lost and held onto Lance’s hips for good measure. He wanted to keep trying because he was so close to getting it right. Just needed a little bit more practice.
So, he took the initiative by placing a finger under Lance’s chin and mirrored Lance’s smile right away. “Round two?”
“Round two.”
For some reason his lips felt a little more sensitive now. Not in a bad way, per se, but hm, that was different. Lance’s free hand slid up to his chest, resting right where his heart was beating loudly and hummed into the kiss.
“Don’t think about it,” Lance murmured, barely audible, his breathy words tickling Keith’s lips pleasantly. The hand that was holding the back of Keith’s neck tightened its grip, firm yet gentle, and his other hand cupped his waist. “Just respond to my movements with your own.”
“Okay,” Keith breathed and felt Lance’s lips brush against his again.
His eyes fluttered closed as he tried to clear his head and merely focus on the kissing. When Lance’s lips had closed around his, he responded by opening his mouth slightly and mimicking the motion once again. It didn’t feel like much, but he did it again, sighing through his nose, so Keith kept going and going until he felt it.
Their rhythm.
Their lips created almost deafening sloppy noises, but Keith was so entranced by Lance’s soft and plump lips continuously moving against his own that he couldn’t care less. He was finally getting the hang of kissing and enjoying every second of it.
Lance dug his fingers into the back of his neck and Keith had to stop himself from letting out a groan. He never could’ve imagined that something as simple as kissing could feel so nice and good and oh, he could feel a warm, tingly sensation in his abdomen, quickly coming to life.
Sadly, this was also when Lance pulled back a bit, smiled at him, his eyes sparkling dangerously before he leaned back in from a different angle, thank god.
The tips of their noses touched, but not in an annoying way, and Lance pressed their lips together once more. This time it was Keith who breathed roughly through his nose and, very hesitantly, held Lance’s jaw to steady them both. He had no idea why, but breathing steadily wasn’t enough anymore. His heart was slowly but surely picking up the pace, pumping aggressively, and the warmth in his stomach was spreading to his chest and head, making him feel dizzy.
He needed air and found himself almost panting against Lance’s lips, as if he’d run a marathon.
And he could fucking feel Lance smirking against his lips, probably aware of all the shit that was going on in Keith’s head.
Since when was this a thing? He could literally feel Lance’s lips stretching across his and a breathy chuckle escaping and Keith shuddered, tingles spreading across his skin.
Lance’s hand moved up to comb through his hair and that was the moment Keith realized he needed a breather.
They separated and Keith tried his best not to curl up into a ball and hide in shame.
“You’re getting better,” Lance said earnestly but there was a clear hint of playfulness in his voice. “You actually kissed me back this time. Told you it wasn’t that hard.”
“Shut up.”
He did but nuzzled his nose, which was not supposed to be that cute. He’d never done that before and Keith felt stupidly mushy. “Kissing’s nice, isn’t it?”
Yeah. Yeah, it was.
Which was why Keith leaned in again and slotted their lips together once more. Now that he felt more confident and knew what he was doing, he put a little more pressure behind his kisses and experimented with his pacing. His lips were tingling in earnest now, but it felt good. Sliding them against Lance’s again and again felt so damn good that he never ever wanted to stop.
And Lance— Lance held on tight, his breaths already getting rapid, kisses getting more desperate.
It was the perfect drug. Keith dared to lay his hand on Lance’s lower back and press their bodies together and his boyfriend happily obliged, bringing himself closer and closer until there was hardly any space between them. And Keith kissed and kissed, shifting his focus to Lance’s cupid bow and suckling on it ever so slightly.
A small noise of surprise pulled him out of his daze. Lance had stopped for a second, but dove right back in, lips stretched into a wide grin. “Didn’t even have to explain that bit, huh?”
“Mhm.”
Sometimes his movement would get lazy and Lance would haul him right back into the game, daring to carefully bite into Keith’s lower lip and wow, Keith couldn’t think anymore.
His lips were throbbing. Lance’s breaths against them were enough to send shivers down his spine and Keith loved it. His fingers found their way up Lance’s hoodie, roaming over his waist and ribs, creating even more sparks between them. In turn, Lance’s hand slid down his collar, fingertips digging into his bare shoulders, setting Keith’s skin on fire.
All he knew was that he was kissing Lance and that every single movement of his lips came naturally and that he wanted more, more, more. Wanted to kiss him until they’d both be completely out of breath and dizzy from the lack of air. Wanted to take his lips between his teeth. Wanted to leave bite marks. Wanted and needed.
“Any tips?” Keith whispered against the other’s swollen lips, voice laced with amusement and confidence.
It had the desired effect. Lance sighed and held onto Keith’s shirt like a lifeline.
“No,” was the breathy reply. “I taught you well.”